"I'm sure they'd be real glad to see you," he went on, as she stood there doubtfully. "I doubt if anybody has visited them for a long time. You could visit your great-grandfather, Ebenezer Doane. Whales were so afraid of that man that they'd send word around from sea to sea that he was coming. And Lucy Doane is there--Ebenezer's wife. Lucy Doane was a woman who took what she wanted. Maybe the whales were afraid of Ebenezer--but Lucy wasn't. There was a dispute between her and her brother about a quilt of their mother's, and in the dead of night she went into his house and took it off him while he slept. Spunk up! Be like the _old_ Doanes! _Go_ to the cemetery and wander around from grave to grave while the Cadaras are standin' by their one stone! My father--he'd be glad to see you. Why, if he was alive now--if Captain Silas Doane was here, he'd let the Cadaras know whether they could walk on the sidewalk or whether they were to go in the street!" Myrtie was interested, but after a moment she turned away. "You only go for near relatives," she sighed. He stood staring at the place where she had been. He laughed; stopped the laugh; stood there staring. "You only go for _near_ relatives." Slowly he turned and walked out of the house. The government goat, left home alone, came up to him as if she thought she'd take a walk too. "Go to hell!" said Joe Doane, and his voice showed that inside he was crying. Head down, he walked along the beach as far as the breakwater. He started out on it, not thinking of what he was doing. So the only thing he could do for Myrtie was give her a reason for going to the cemetery. She _wanted_ him in the cemetery--so she'd have some place to go on Sunday afternoons! She could wear black then--_all_ black, not just a ribbon round her neck. Suddenly he stood still. Would she _have_ any black to wear? He had thought of a joke before which all other jokes he had ever thought of were small and sick. Suppose he were to take himself out of the way and then they didn't _get_ the things they thought they'd have in place of him? He walked on fast--fast and crafty, picking his way among the smaller stones in between the giant stones in a fast, sure way he never could have picked it had he been thinking of where he went. He went along like a cat who is going to get a mouse. And in him grew this giant joke. Who'd _give_ them the fireless cooker? Would it come into anybody's head to give young Joe Doane a sail-boat just because his father was dead? They'd rather have a goat than a father. But suppose they were to lose the father and _get_ no goat? Myrtie'd be a mourner without any mourning. She'd be _ashamed_ to go to the cemetery. He laughed so that he found himself down, sitting down on one of the smaller rocks between the giant rocks, on the side away from town, looking out to sea.